I was on Adriamycin and Taxol - I had a pretty healthy dose with each treatment, but I only had 4 treatments, once a month. (Perhaps I should have had more - 5 years later we found nodules in my lungs - metastasis from the same cancer.)
Yes, adriamycin can be a nasty drug. They don't call it the "red devil" for nothing.
I lost my hair, which was not that big a deal for me. I made if fun when I could - which was quite a bit of the time. I was nauseated quite a lot, but never to the point of throwing up. Phenergan made me really sleepy, which I couldn't afford as I was trying to still work, so the dr put me on Zofran - very expensive, but very effective. I just took it around the clock for about the first 5 or 6 days after chemo, then I only needed it once, maybe twice a day. I was very tired - that was probably also due to the fact that I'd had 3 major surgeries in 4 months before I started chemo. My blood count never went low - I took Neutrogen the first 2 treatments, then I realized that I really felt like I had the flu after I took my shots, so I didn't take it with the 3rd and 4th treatments, and did ok.. I did try really hard to eat lots of veggies and really nutritious food as much as I could, so I could keep my blood count up and have more energy. Food just didn't taste good, so it was hard to eat, but I drank purple grape juice (as cold as I could get it) whenever I ate something, and that really helped. I also found I did much better with bitter or sour foods, rather than sweet or spicy.
The biggest problem I had was some shortness of breath - which I again attributed to the fact that I'd had a lot of surgery before the chemo - and chest pain. Both adriamycin and taxol have cause chest pain for some people, more so the adriamycin than the taxol. I was hospitalized overnight for testing and observation, oxygen. Turns out my heart and lungs were just fine. They thought the chest pain might be due to irritation of the soft tissues of the chest wall from the chemo.
Does the dr want to add the adriamycin to the cytoxan AND taxotere? That would be a pretty tough combination of drugs. Usually they just do the cytoxan and adriamycin, or the taxotere and adriamycin, or like I had, taxol and adriamycin. You might ask about having the latter combination, as taxol tends to have less side effects than either the cytoxin or taxotere.
Also, for the neutropenia - really try to boost your intake of foods rich in B vitamins, as they are the primary building blocks for bone marrow and blood cells. That and foods that are rich in iron. Many people say to severely limit intake of iron because cancer cells thrive on iron, but the fact is that if you are only getting a little bit of iron, the cancer is going to gobble it up and there won't be any left for your normals cells. And we just can't keep up our bloodstream, or our oxygenation, without adequate iron. If you want to learn more about how these work, and foods that are rich sources of blood builders, take a look at my blog. I have a series of articles on the B complex vitamins - a little easier and hopefully more informative reading than a lot of what you get on the internet. Just put vitamin B in the search box on the blog, and start with the earliest article (post #1), and work your way thru to post #10.
http://motherearthtreasurechest.blogspot.com
Wishing you the best with your treatment,
Sincerely,
Tre